I run to the house and down the stairs to the basement flat. I can’t get my key in the door quick enough. I don’t kick off my Converse; I let my suede coat drop to the floor and it lands upon two envelopes, one pink and one lilac, Liverpool postmarks. I’ll open them later. I’m not going to hesitate any longer. I’m doing it. I drag a stool to the cooker and clamber onto it, kneeling up and steadying myself with my hands against the mug cupboard. I reach over. One hand. I tap the bottom edge of the picture, lifting it gently, sliding my fingers beneath the canvas. With a little push up, it unhooks from the wall. Afraid of what might fall down from behind it, I jump down from the stool and duck, but I trip, fall, and lose my grip on the picture.

I land on my hands and knees, the kitchen tiles a cold slap to my palms.

The picture tumbles down beside me, clattering like a dull cymbal.

My eyes dart about the floor, looking for something.

What? What? What am I looking for?

I pull myself up on the work surface and scour the hobs, hunt behind the chopping board. Did something fall down the back of the toaster? All I find is old crumbs. How old are those crumbs?

I shake the picture.

Nothing falls out.

‘No!’ I cry out. ‘There can’t be nothing!’

There must be something.

I pace the flat. I need to sense him, feel him. But I can’t. It’s been a while since I imagined Jack, and even longer since his presence was so huge that I believed he was still here. His scent has been washed away with the candles I’ve burnt, the windows I’ve opened. His clothes are in his childhood home. His bedsheets have been washed. The bathroom is a feminine shrine to Boots, and the last male deodorant in there was Freddie’s. I pick up the picture of the man sat in the shopping trolley, hold it out: just canvas on a wooden frame. I shake it again.

‘No!’ I cry again.

I close my eyes. Tears.

They kiss my eyelashes, stream down my cheeks.

‘No!’

For almost six months, I’ve been searching for answers to questions I was never asked, holding tight onto something that was already gone. I wail, releasing long, loud sobs, desperate to be free.

And then I see it.

Through my tears, through the canvas, through the white wall that now hangs bare. I see it all. Everything that was behind the picture.

Everything.